Preface to the Special Issue on 'Recent Progress of Cokemaking Technologies for Low-quality and Unused Carbon Resources'

摘要

Recent years, a manufacturing of high-strength coke for stable low RAR blast furnace operation is required to reduce CO2 emission. On the other hand, resource depletion of high-quality coal and iron ore continues. Thus it has become much more important to produce high quality burden using low grade resource. As for coal, in conjunction with the rising price of high-quality caking coals, it is difficult to obtain non or slightly caking coals. So utilization of carbon resources for cokemaking is an important issue. If we pay more attention to overall carbon resources, there are biomass, subbituminous coal, lignite and the oil residue which are not used for coke production. Figure 1 shows the "Van Krevelen Diagram" which was proposed by Krevelen''. It is supposed that above-mentioned unused carbon resources will be converted to carbon resources which are suitable for cokemaking, in other words, an "Artificial Coalification" which is such as mechanical compression, dehydration, decarboxylation and demethanation, implements the formation of "reformed coal" and "binder". As approaches for achievement of this purpose,1) Understanding of chemical structure of the binder which develops and promotes the melting-adhesion action between low-quality carbon resources and high-quality caking coals, should be achieved. This results in the development of advanced blending technology of carbon resources.